Dedicated automation AI tool adds ECAD and project generation
22 June 2026 
Just two months after Siemens announced its Eigen Engineering Agent AI tool for industrial automation engineering at the Hannover Messe, it has added two new capabilities – integration with ECAD (electrical computer-aided design), and standards-compliant project generation. These additions mean that the tool now extends into earlier stages of automation engineering, connecting electrical designs with software development, and turning plain-language machine descriptions into standards-compliant projects.
Unlike most AI assistants which simply generate suggestions, the Eigen Engineering Agent plans, executes and validates industrial automation engineering tasks end-to-end. It understands projects, writes control software, configures systems and keeps refining its work until it meets defined quality benchmarks. This will allow automation engineers to focus on system-level decisions, says Siemens.
The Agent works alongside Siemens’ TIA Portal engineering software platform, and is part of its Xcelerator portfolio. The tool is already being used by more than 100 companies in 19 countries.
The agent accelerates everyday engineering work such as PLC programming, HMI visualisation, and the configuration of drives, motors and encoders. Siemens says it delivers:
- 2-5 times faster execution than manual workflows;
- gains in engineering efficiency of up to 50%; and
- 80% improvements in quality.
With its extended capabilities, the Eigen Engineering Agent now understands more of the context that comes before software development, including hardware topology, machine structure and engineering intent. These capabilities move the Agent further upstream in the automation lifecycle, helping engineers to start from the system as designed, rather than from manual set-ups.
Currently, electrical and automation engineering happen in sequence, using different tools and different ways of describing the same machine. Electrical engineers design the wiring and hardware in ECAD tools. Automation engineers then program how the machine behaves, working from tags, function blocks and control logic. Translating from one to the other is done by hand: engineers retype lists of devices, fix mismatched names and track down late hardware changes. That takes time and creates errors.
The Eigen Engineering Agent now reads electrical design files in formats such as XML and AML. It detects inconsistencies, resolves or flags them, adds devices to a TIA Portal project, configures the connections, and generates PLC tags based on the actual hardware topology. The result is said to be a faster, cleaner start to every project, and software that begins with the electrical design as built.
New automation projects start the same way. Engineers break a machine down into parts, name the modules, organise the data and define how the machine moves between states. Even experienced teams can spend days doing this before they write a single line of control software.
The Eigen Engineering Agent is said to turn machine descriptions into standards-compliant projects within minutes. Engineers describe the machine in plain language: its stations, devices and how it should behave. The agent then generates a project that follows the Siemens Automation Framework – the company’s best-practice reference for structuring TIA Portal projects. The project opens in TIA Portal, ready to build on.
“Engineering teams lose time between electrical design and software and between knowing best practices and applying them,” explains Vasi Philomin, executive vice-president and head of data and AI at Siemens. “With these new capabilities, the Eigen Engineering Agent brings hardware topology, system structure and engineering intent into the automation workflow, enabling automation engineers to start from a project that already reflects the system they need to automate. This way engineers can focus more on the work that matters.”
“The Eigen Engineering Agent shows what AI can deliver beyond the digital world,” adds Siemens board member Peter Koerte, who is also the company’s chief technology officer and chief strategy officer. “It makes companies up to 50% more efficient in complex engineering work, while making the results more reliable. That’s what it takes to build the machines, factories and infrastructure that keep everyday life running – and it’s what real value from AI in the physical world looks like.”
Both new capabilities are now included in the standard Eigen Engineering Agent subscription at no extra cost.
